


Much That Is Broken - Chapter 1 of "A Sword of Air and Darkness"

by Chibojan



Category: Loki - Fandom, Thor (Movies), Thor - Fandom, Thor: Tales of Asgard
Genre: Brothers, Forgiveness, M/M, Redemption, sexual healing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 13:42:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4668746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibojan/pseuds/Chibojan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor finds Loki mistreated in prison and brings him to his own quarters.  The rape referred occurs offscreen in prison.  Angry and shamed, Loki tries to hold Thor at a distance. They say he has no heart, but Thor knows he does, because "I saw your eyes when it broke".  Brothers only by the bond of their hearts, lovers because it is the only way back, a broken Loki finds a bridge to safety - if he can only cross it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Much That Is Broken - Chapter 1 of "A Sword of Air and Darkness"

**Author's Note:**

> I chose to rate this as mature rather than explicit, and I hope that you will agree. I will be glad to change if our family here desires me to but I wrote with the softest focus because it was the love they have, more than the love they make, that was important. 
> 
> Much has been written about the relationship of these two: I think many of us seized on a relationship so deep and so damaged we had to use our transformative powers to bring Loki home. 
> 
> I perhaps add nothing new - but to me, since Loki's madness was brought on by what I thought an act of cruelty, and I perhaps project my own loneliness and confusion on him. I wanted very much to write about redemption and how it can sometimes be found in the unshakeable love of another. I am a definite defender of Loki, and I like to think that each of us has someone who, "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes" will open their arms and say, "Come home."
> 
> At any rate I think it makes a rather lovely bedtime story.
> 
> ***  
> I ask the indulgence of you who read this story when it was newly posted on 8/27/2015. It has been a while since I dealt with HTML and I managed, of course to post the wrong version. Like Loki, I said, "Shit." If you return, you will find what I hope is a much improved and properly edited version. These two heroes deserve the best :)

The first thing I did was stand under the golden swan’s heads that spouted hot water until all the prison smell and the feel of the prison guard’s hands were off me. My brother bathed by running through the bath with his clothes on so I knew there would be no soap but I found a bar of dark brown cleaning soap and that was fine: I scrubbed until my skin was raw. There was at least a towel, although much smudged – he had cleaned Mjolnir with it no doubt - and I shook my too long hair dry and wrapped the towel around my waist and then had to wrap it more tightly. In the smeared copper mirror I caught a glimpse of myself: hair below my shoulders, hipbones sharp, ribs showing. It may be my Jotun blood but even in the copper reflection I had an eerie pallor.  
  
I opened the doors and the first thing he did was embrace me, whether I was willing or not.  
  
I hated him in that moment and yet there was a place where my face fit, between his shoulder and throat, where I had pillowed my head since I was very small. I inhaled the smell of him. No matter how much filth and sweat was on him, or how long since he’d washed his long pale hair, underneath was still his smell, and like wolves in a den I knew that smell, and loved it. What animals we are, even the Aesir!  
  
“My Loki,” he said. My feet were almost off the floor, and I am considered tall.  
  
“Thor, let go, I’m sore.” He did, but immediately, his face creased with a frown, held me in front of him and examined me like I was something he was about to purchase. I saw his brows draw together as he saw the big cloudy bruises on my back, a parting gift from my jailers. One had caught me in the kidneys and it was all I could do not to cry out. There was a time when I would have set him alight with the cold fire I could draw down from the air. Some curse my – no, his father -had placed to “protect” other people from my power had rendered me unable to protect myself except by the warrior training I’d gotten when Thor’s weapons master was bored. I remembered him calling Odin’s attention to me:  
  
”T ’young one, my Lord, he’s fair wicked with a sword, and quick. “  
  
“Yes, he’s a good lad,” Odin said, never glancing my way, hurrying to watch Thor with his trained hammer. I shrugged it off but the old master said, “Magic ‘ammer’s well enough but there’s something to be said for speed and grace. You dance like a cat, lad, it’s well done, it is, and no magic but ‘ard work.” He was always kind, even when I was in disgrace. “T ’young one, Lord Odin niver gave ‘im a look, and it was a grand lad he was. Turned ‘im bitter, that, I think. Was a quick lad with a sword and always spoke me fair, respectful, never roarin’ like t’ Prince. Not right, it’s not, that.”  
  
He came to the prison once and waxed indignant about my rags and filth, my swollen hands shackled over my head. “Ain’t ‘e just as much a Prince as the Young Lord? It’s a right shame, it is, e’en if ‘e was a common thief. I sh’ll speak to Lord Thor, you see if I don’t. ‘e wouldn’t have this, not ‘is own brother. Oh lad, it’s sorry I am, sorry indeed, it’s a good lad you are, but they broke you,” and he took a bright blue handkerchief out and held it under the dripping, slimy tap and tried to wash the dried blood from under my nose. But they hooted at him and threw him out. He was as good as his word, though, for Thor came down and laid about him with his magic ‘ammer and I was brought up to his quarters under guard.  
  
Thor’s scowl grew more intense and to my exasperation he pulled the towel off and threw it down to continue inspecting. I am not modest, but it was annoying to be handled like a poorly made weapon. “These bruises,” he muttered and turned me around – just go with it, I told myself – and ran his hand over the swollen purple lump on my lower back. “They kicked you? Is this sore?”  
  
“Yes , yes it is. Even more so when you press on it. It’s all right, Thor. How many opportunities does one get to knock around a captive Jotun?”  
  
“They had no orders to touch you. You were to be treated with respect due to your station.”  
  
“And they did – my station as a filthy Jotun traitor. No, I do not want a healer, it will be fine. I piss blood but that will heal. In time,” I added, knowing it already should have. But maybe Odin took that as well.  
  
I picked up the towel. “Thor, is it possible to get my clothes? I don’t care what it is if it’s clean. And my boots. If I can.”  
My brother sat down on the bed; Mjolnir leaped to his hand and I shied a little at the lightning that wrapped around his wrist. “Of course. Clothes, boots, your books, anything- not a weapon, I’m afraid, but anything else you ask for you may have. I made a standing order. And food, I told them I wanted food in here now!” He was in a rage. “My brother, beaten, starved, tormented…”  
  
“I am not really your brother,” I said. “Everyone knows that.”  
  
“ You are, and I am…I am sorry, Loki. They told me you were being treated well…”  
  
“Yes, well, they place little value on truth here,” I said and Thor looked away.  
  
“I should have come, “he said. “Had I known it would not have endured another minute.”  
  
As angry as I was at him I knew that true. He had always been gentle at heart and tender with me. Just then they brought an enormous tray of food which was not to his liking; he knew what dishes I preferred to the usual Asgard fare of roast meat, roast meat and roast meat and had wanted me to have them but apparently Odin countermanded this unseemly coddling. “It’s fine, brother, I’ll eat anything. It’s grand compared to the prison. Wine would be good, too, whatever is there.”  
  
“Yes. Here, you like this, and the bread is good…” I thought he was going to spoonfeed me. I drank a mouthful of the wine and I tried to eat but I’d been on short rations so long that I couldn’t. “I’m sorry. Perhaps later. “ Even to myself I sounded humble, beaten.  
  
“You are ill,” he said, stroking my face. “How can you be ill?”  
  
“Well, fa- the King took my magic and nothing heals so…”Again I shrugged. But my head spun with the wine and the bright lights and the next thing I knew he had put me in his bed. His blue eyes were narrow with anger and concern. I lay back. Please whatever Gods still love me, do not let me puke.  
  
I had a bad night; I think it was just like all my nights except that I realized how ill I was. "Ill" was a new feeling, along with “humbled” “shamed” and “broken.” I had fever, and of course, I did throw up and I have to say that he held my hair and wiped my face.  
I slept for a few hours – with him hovering over me – and when I woke there was something heavy on the bed. "My books! “I cried. I looked up, smiling - an expression not common for me. Thor said, a little shyly, "I hoped you'd be pleased."  
  
"Thank you, yes! It is like friends." I was still caressing my precious books when I looked up. He was so big, and even in the gray and blue house clothes, imposing - but he was young by our years, as I am young, and there was such pain in him as only the young know.  
  
"Please forgive me," he said. He was not weeping but he was close. I closed the box.  
  
"That was long ago done," I said quietly. "You must know that, you must let me give you that, at least."  
  
"It is all I want. But you have my forgiveness, my love, as always."  
  
"I am not worthy," I said. "Father says I am insane, driven mad by pride but it was never that. I doubted my worth and he confirmed it and now...How can I allow you to forgive what I cannot forgive myself? How I can take your love when I have no heart, as he said, in which to keep it?"  
  
"Damn him!" my brother thundered and the next thing I knew I was pinned to the bed. "You have to forgive yourself! And you do have a heart, Loki, because I saw your eyes when it broke," he finished and looked away.  
  
And I knew then this bridge, unlike the Bifrost, could not be destroyed. He lay beside me and I let him caress me, first because I did not care and then because I was hungry for such gentleness. He whispered our words for our secret pleasures and I shook my head but he slid his hand down my body and felt the lie I’d told. He went to the foot of the bed. I closed my eyes, and I felt his arms around my thighs, the muscle in them not yet diminished by confinement and felt him nuzzling me.  
  
“Open your legs for me, my own."and without waiting he spread them like a bear spreading branches for honey. You do not think of him as anything but the dominant, the rider, the master but I...there were things he had learned from me and from others, I think, and what he did when he buried his face between my legs made my bones melt. "Oh God," he whispered, kissing the inside of my leg, "so clean, so sweet..." He licked and cradled me and then he took me in his hand and began to do what I so often did for him; he took me in his mouth and although he was untutored his mouth was warm and wet and it made me buck. When he left off, it left me in such a state that I had to reach down and wrap my own hand around myself as he stripped. He is beautiful, my Thor, that war gear may be impressive but it hides a beautiful body, not as bulky as it looks, and where there is hair it is golden fur and even as big as he was that part of him rising from that bright delta, it, too, was perfect, like a column of gold bound with pale blue chains .  
  
I know what I look like: I have a dancer's body and long legs; my muscles lie flat where my brother's bulge but I am strong. I am a warrior too; they forget that. I do not have his beauty except perhaps the green of my eyes but when he looked at me lying sprawled naked, my knees up over his arms he smiled with pride - "My brother, my Loki," he said, shaking his head in wonder. " My beautiful boy."  
  
Then he came up, scooped me up. Covered with his body I was safe. He raised my head in his hands to kiss me, he slid his hand down my body to caress me but fear beat in my pulse. He slid a big hand between my legs, and I felt him touch me _there_ and I began to shake uncontrollably.  
  
There were many things that had happened to me in prison I had not told Thor. But when I began to shiver, he stopped, he held me for a long time. "Did they hurt you?" he asked, and I could hear the suppressed rage. He could not say the word. It was a long time before I could.  
  
"It happens," I said. "They amused themselves."  
  
I couldn't smile but I tried. Thor's eyes were the color of midnight. "Loki," he said, "we will do nothing you cannot bear. If we lie here all the night like this, I am content but I tell you that tomorrow I will be the last thing those guards see. God of Thunder? They have no idea. They know not what awaits them in the morning.“  
  
Then he gathered me to him and for a long time he just...you cannot imagine what it is like to have him hold you. Like a tree that has grown around you to make a fortress, like the arms of some warrior archangel sent to shield you. And that is my weak place, it will always be my weak place, and when he said, "It’s all right now, my own, Brother has you now," I broke, and I did weep - Loki the Cold, Loki of the Darkness. I cried as I have not cried in many years and he murmured over me with tenderness made greater by how very untender he and I appear and that was when it came over me: I needed him.  
  
"I want you," I said pressing my lips in his blonde hair, "I want you. I want to be one with you.”  
  
He gave a soft whuff, like a lion. He wanted me too. “I don’t want to injure you. You may be hurt inside, and if so I might make it worse because…well…” He was miserable talking about this, he kept stroking me as if it would somehow make it better. I took his face in my hands and I smiled even though I wasn’t sure if I remembered quite how.  
  
"Some pain," I said softly, "is gladly borne. Take me and let me feel clean again, brother."  
  
"You are sure, Loki? Not for worlds would I raise memories of your suffering."  
  
"Burn it out of me with your love and I will take whatever pain there is." And I reached down for him.  
  
He smiled and I turned over for him. We had been lovers since our mid-teens and the first time he took me like that his desire got away from him and he slammed his body into mine – we had not learned about oils and unguents then, nor how to make it easier – and I yelped and actually passed out. You have to remember I was 15 and he was not much older but he was fully a man. When I came to I felt ripped open and was bleeding a tiny bit and he was terrified and rocking me – but of course everything healed in a few minutes. Healing though does not mean the pain disappears; for us a broken arm is very painful for the bones knit in a few minutes, coming together hard. The next day we were supposed to hunt, but I could not sit a saddle, and said I was ill, so he claimed illness too and stayed home with me and my secret woe. 

It was a great sacrifice for him, especially as he had a new horse but later when everyone that was not out hunting was napping by the fires I said, “I learned something,” and slid under the sheets like an otter and made him tear down the bedcurtains with my new trick of taking him in my mouth. “You do know magic!” he gasped. We had grown wiser. Now he lifted me with his arm under my belly and opened me like a rare book, gently, but it was not his touch, the gentle press of his fingers on what was still, I realized, not quite healed, but the position, and him over me - I was in near panic. He realized it and lay beside me and stroked me. “We do not have to do this,” he said. “We have so many other things we can do. To have you near me – anything else is grace.”  
  
But I needed this. I needed him to take me and erase the memories. I started to get astride him, so I could see his face, remind myself I was home but he grabbed me and said “No, not like that. Come here. Beside me.” He pillowed my head on his arm and I let him move my body until I was snuggled back against him but it was not frightening, because his cheek lay on mine, and I knew it was him.  
  
“Will you do something for me?”  
  
“Anything, my own,” he said, rubbing his face in my hair.  
  
"Go slowly....and keep talking to me."  
  
My tolerance for pain is high and I wanted him and as he began I used everything I knew to make my body relax. I let him move me the way he needed to, reminding myself I was safe in his arms, and found my body and mind eased by his constant deep murmur of reassurance. He essayed me with oil-covered fingers, caressing at first and then entering me as gently as he knew how but sweat ran from my body. "I know, I know, my brave one," he whispered. He brushed my hair back with his hand, and kissed me gently. I could do little in the way of caress since my back was against his belly but I did lift his free hand and began to lick and suck his fingers, which always made him groan.  
  
I felt him massaging my haunches and thighs with one hand, rubbing the small of my back as he did the things that helped (although I was gripping the sheets tightly) and then he whispered, “Now, my heart,” and withdrew his fingers and for a moment I thought, just tell him you’re afraid, idiot but then he was pressing into me, again and again, harder each time and rolling me over a little and telling me to breathe, breathe. It hurt so that I nearly gagged.  
  
I wanted him to go on though and he kissed me and praised me. “I know it hurts. Stay with me, I can feel the walls coming up, as they ever do when you hurt. “ He coaxed and gentled me like a colt until I felt my body opening and I did not think I could bear it but when he moaned from deep in his chest I wanted him to be locked inside me, pain or not. 

There is the first hard part, which hurts, which was over and then the second which hurts a little more and I didn't have the steel for it. "Take me, do it," I said desperately. "Make me take it, do it now while I can..." 

He turned my head gently and leaned over me. "Look into my eyes, Loki, nowhere else, just look at me and think how much I love you.” He pulled my hips to him, held me still and with one hard, steady, agonizing thrust he was in me. I bit my lip but he could feel me brace myself and he locked me to him and began kissing me harder, a little roughly. It reminded me of how it had been when I was so wild I had no boundaries and would amaze him in the night. 

“ Tell me whose beloved you are,’” he said harshly. "Say it. Who do you belong to?” He pushed into me hard with each question.  
  
“To you. To you.”  
  
It was hurting a little less each time and he was going deeper, bringing me closer until most of him was in me, buried like a sword and all he wanted from me then was to let him pull me closer until I could feel his groin against me. For a moment the old panic flamed. "Loki, I've got you,” he said. “You're safe, safe... Oh God I want to be part of you ... take it now, take it all..." I felt the last deep thrust in my belly and then heard that deep groan that ended in a sob and in seconds everything shattered in my body and he held me so tightly it was hard to breathe but I didn’t need to breathe because he had covered my mouth with his own and there was all the breath I needed.  
  
I was afraid to move. As the brilliant glow of pleasure wore off I winced with his slightest move and he cradled me and comforted me like a child. When his power had diminished I pulled away and even in the darkness - how long had we been, that the torches went out - he saw the blood and would not let me rise - I was ashamed of it, ashamed of what had been done to me still. I put my head down on my knees and thought of how they used me, held me down, and me with nothing to fight them, not even my words.  
  
Thor had fetched water and cloth but he saw me huddled and he set it down quickly, slopping it everywhere because small things were difficult for him to do and for some reason it made me ache, those big hands so deadly with the hammer, so clumsy with household things, so tender with me.  
  
He wrapped his arms around me. “I hated them so much,” I said, my chest heaving but my sobs dry and painful, "And I fought, Thor, I fought them as hard as I could but I had nothing to fight with.”  
  
“I know you did. I know your courage. Anyone can be outnumbered, little brother.”  
  
“It hurt so much, and there were four of them and I didn’t want to but I…” I stopped. Thor didn’t look up, just held me tighter.  
  
“I called for you. I couldn’t help it. And they laughed at me and threw the mop water over me where I lay.”  
  
For a long time he held me and I felt him shaking. “To think of them hurting you and I not there, calling for me and I did not come…Loki, forgive me. If I had known nothing would have stopped me.”  
  
And I knew as I buried my face in his chest, swallowed sobs aching in my throat, that he would have done just that; that he would have broken down walls in his fury and taken their heads and lifted me up, lifted me high above their reach and brought me home.  
  
To get over the moment I reached for the cloth and the bowl flipped over, and I said, “Shit” and it made him laugh. He fetched more and bathed me, first my face and hands and then my back and legs, very tenderly. Then he lay down and said, very seriously: “There is no more shame after this, do you hear? No one has touched you but me. If your memories haunt you, I have no duty I will not stop to comfort you.”  
  
He looked out over my head into the darkness as if speaking to someone who’d challenged him and his arm came up like a shield across my shoulders. “Listen to me, Loki _Odinson_ , brother and beloved of Thor: You are home now. My home. From now on, your meals will brought to you and we eat here together or if I cannot, you can read your books and eat in peace as you love, without the stares of others. In this place you shall walk as you please and they will address you as Prince and I will permit no insolence, no whispers. As often as I can you will ride out with me and at night you shall sleep here beside me, in my arms, so I can have you close and watch over you. So I can hear the heart they deny you have, brother, my lover, my Loki. You have always been mine. You are forgiven and you are loved and anyone who questions that, even Odin himself, will bring down the lightning of my anger.”  
  
I swallowed hard, my eyes burning as he lay his head down on my shoulder. What is pride besides this? How does anger stand? All my magic was nothing against the greatness of his heart. He whispered "Sleep, little brother, in safety and peace," and I obeyed him gladly...and I slept.


End file.
